Ender's Game

2013 • 113 minutes

À propos de ce film

Based on the best-selling novel, "Ender's Game" is an epic adventure starring Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis and Abigail Breslin. In the near future, a hostile alien race called the Formics has attacked Earth. If not for the legendary heroics of International Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley), all would have been lost. In preparation for the next attack, the highly esteemed Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) and the International Military are training only the best young minds to find the future Mazer. Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), a shy but strategically brilliant boy, is recruited to join the elite. Arriving at Battle School, Ender quickly and easily masters increasingly difficult challenges and simulations, distinguishing himself and winning respect amongst his peers. Ender is soon ordained by Graff as the military's next great hope, resulting in his promotion to Command School. Once there, he's trained by Mazer Rackham himself to lead his fellow soldiers into an epic battle that will determine the future of Earth and save the human race.

Notes et avis

I have the book, the audio version, and the theatrical audio version. I was really hoping that they'd get this right. The overall problem is the movie feels rushed. The pacing is slap dash from one scene to the next and it feels entirely melodramatic, even cornball when compared to the novel. For some adaptations, there is sense they took too much out. But here, for me anyway, it's almost like they kept too much in--and forgot to tell Ender's story--the struggle to discover who he is.

A lot of the decisions they made about this movie detracted from its overall quality, namely to "age" the characters so that the violence and situations would be more palatable on screen. Unfortunately, by doing that, they made it much harder to sympathize with the characters. Ender, in the book, is one of the youngest and smallest kids in Battle School (second to Bean). In the movie, he is of average size, and any sense you might have of his physical vulnerability is lost. Aside from this, connections between characters are very one-dimensional, and there is far less nuance here than I would have liked. In the end, not just a bad adaptation of an excellent book, but also just a poor movie in general.

As a HUGE fan of the novel, I couldn't wait for the movie adaptation. I followed the movie's progress for years waiting as the pieces fell in place. Unfortunately, the wait wasn't worth it for me. The movie completely failed to live up to the expectations set by the novel. The movie missed many of the important themes in the book. Isolation was key to the character development of Ender, and they rushed through any of the events that shaped him. The movie had as much development as a Fast and the Furious movie. If you like beautiful cinematic scenes and explosions, watch the movie. You will enjoy it if you don't know how the characters are meant to evolve. If you have read the book, I would recommend staying away from the film.